The present invention relates to telecommunications systems, and in particular, to an improved IP telephony system.
In communication systems, it is possible for more telephone calls to arrive for a destination than can be processed by the called party. To prevent such calls from being lost, central switching systems such as private branch exchanges (PBXs) implement queues that hold the calls until they can be processed by the called party.
In an Internet Protocol (IP) telephony environment based upon protocols such as ITU-T H.323, no such central switch exists. Thus, to accomplish a queue in such a system, the destination workstation is required to accept and control all of the queued calls. Such workstations, however, require significant memory processor and network resources. In many cases, such resources are not available in common workstations that need to receive the queued calls.
In addition, IP-based call center applications have been designed with central servers responsible for accepting the calls. In such cases, the server then uses third-party call control to transfer the call to a specially equipped H.323 workstation. Typically, however, such call center applications are very expensive and in most cases require special software for the third-party call control in the destination H.323 workstation.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved method for queuing calls in an IP or packet-based telephony environment.